"Thomas Berg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. .. <snip> > My initial point when I started this thread was that if > You make an effort to create a functionality, why doing > it badly ? > > Thomas
* * * The answer is that you want COPY/REPLACING to be something that it was not designed to be. The original (1960 or maybe '68) ANSI design was intended to ONLY allow for changes of FULL "COBOL text words". This is something that the original design did and every COBOL Standard (and implementation) since has fully supported. COBOL provides for a number of "solutions" to other problems, but this is what this feature was designed to do. It may (or may not) interest you to know that a SPECIFIC design feature of the COBOL Standard is that it may be implemented by a "single pass" compiler - and there are such today. This is (part of) the reason that COPY/REPLACING is definitely NOT a "macro preprocessor". Finally, if you really do want (think it is important) that COBOL be able to replace prefix or suffix strings, then I really do URGE you to do an IBM marketing REQUEST to get IBM to implement the 2002 Standard "leading" and "trailing" feature. If you do so, please reference SHARE requirement: SSLNGC0313590 2002 ISO COBOL - COPY & REPLACE Partial Word Replacement which was ACCEPTED by IBM in January of 2004. If enough customers communicate how important this ENHANCEMENT is to them (especially why the current ":TAG:" method doesn't work for them), the sooner you are likely to see this available in an IBM compiler. (Some vendors have already implemented it.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
